Variations in Criminal Patterns Among Narcotic Addicts in Baltimore and New York City, 1983-1984 (ICPSR 9586)

Citation

Nurco, David N., Hanlon, Thomas E., Kinlock, Timothy W., and Slaght, Evelyn. Variations in Criminal Patterns Among Narcotic Addicts in Baltimore and New York City, 1983-1984. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-05-15. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09586.v2

Summary

This data collection was undertaken to develop a typology
of narcotic addicts according to the kind, frequency, and seriousness
of their crimes and to identify the most serious criminal offenders,
thereby determining which individuals were best suited to
rehabilitation. The following questions are addressed by the data: (1)
What "types" of narcotic addicts can be distinguished in terms of
their criminal behavior? Which of these types are amenable to
rehabilitation? (2) At what time during their addiction careers do
addicts commit the most crime? Do narcotic addicts "mature" out of
addiction? (3) What is the relationship between individuals'
involvement in crime prior to addiction and their criminal activity
and drug use over their addiction career? (4) Which demographic,
personality, or other factors are associated with serious crime
committed during periods of narcotic addiction? (5) What are the
contributions of situational and dispositional factors to the
relationship between addiction and crime? Part 1 of the collection
details the subjects' addiction careers, the age they first used
various drugs, the age they first became addicted to narcotics, the
amount of time they were addicted/not addicted to narcotics, and the
total length of their addiction careers. Part 2 contains variables
generated by cluster analysis, including cluster assignment or "type."
Part 3 includes the educational, occupational, and arrest histories of
the subjects, as well as the drug use and arrest histories of their
families. The Part 4 file consists of Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory and Raven Progressive Matrix scores. The
frequency and types of crime that subjects committed during the
preaddiction period comprise Part 5, while the frequency and nature of
drug use during the preaddiction period comprise Part 6. Parts 7 and 8
contain crime variables and drug use variables, respectively, across
all nonaddiction periods. Finally, Part 9 contains data characterizing
crime across all addiction periods, and Part 10 contains variables
regarding drug use across total addiction periods.

Citation

Nurco, David N., Hanlon, Thomas E., Kinlock, Timothy W., and Slaght, Evelyn. Variations in Criminal Patterns Among Narcotic Addicts in Baltimore and New York City, 1983-1984. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-05-15. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09586.v2

Geographic Coverage

Time Period(s)

1983-05 -- 1984-04

Date of Collection

1983-05 -- 1984-04

Data Collection Notes

The data are organized by topic into a series of
ten data files. Each file contains data for 250 cases, with the
exception of Parts 4, 7, and 8, in which some cases have been deleted
because data are missing for the entire case.

Sample

Data were collected from interviews with 250 male narcotic
addicts. These men were consecutively admitted as outpatients to
methadone treatment centers in Baltimore and New York City between May
1983 and April 1984. The Baltimore sample was drawn from the
outpatient population of five treatment centers. The New York sample
was drawn from a single large-capacity center. Individuals who
experienced a first period of narcotic addiction at least two years
before the interview and who were at least 25 years of age were
eligible for the study.

Data Source

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1991-10-23

Version Date

2013-05-15

Version History

2006-03-30 File CB9586.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

1991-10-23 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Standardized missing values.

2002-06-27 The data files were converted from card image
format to logical record length, and the codebook was converted to PDF
format. Data definition statements for both SAS and SPSS were added.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

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